TurboTax - a nightmare in high-pressure tax return preparation
Ow.
I haven't had a reason to blog for a while. Up until today. I just efiled my return with Turbotax, and, after having spent 2 days with their online suite, I can happily suggest to my readers that they look elsewhere for their tax return preparation and filing needs. TaxCut appears, at the very least, to be cheaper.
Specific issues?
Well, first off, I used the premier version because I had some stock and stock option trades to report. Data import from my brokers succeeded but imported completely useless data (sales were bunched together incorrectly and cost basis information was missing across the board).
Manual data entry for the trades proved challenging - the forms available are badly documented and are missing some crucial fields. I ended up doing a whole lot of precalculation with a spreadsheet and then entering the numbers I had come up with in the forms. It doesn't help that you can't simply enter all info on one page but have to click through 10 to 12 pages of wizards if you just want to change one field.
The reason for all those offline caculations? TurboTax cannot handle wash sales correctly. Ow.
I paid 50$ for the premium version in the hopes not to have to do all this manually.
There are many other hassles - TT decided that I owed a penalty this year, and although I finally found out how to convince it that I didn't (Tools|Search for Forms|2210|go through a lenghty wizard), it was, how to say this? Nonobvious. It also decided to print 4 estimated tax vouchers for 2008, which, it turns out, I really don't need, but the insistance of the program prompted a lot of research.
My typical conclusion at this point would be that I wasted $50 for the privilege of being allowed to do all the work myself and then have it pretty printed, except, well, Turbo Taxes printouts aren't pretty.
But, alas, there is worse. Turbo tax elected to add a new form for employee stock trades and submit it for exactly one of the trades I entered. All others are just listed normally on Schedule D. None of this was apparent before I had completed e-filing. I am now waiting with interest, to see if this gets me audited.
This is the reason I'd never use it again - if I can't see what will be submitted to the IRS, I cannot vouch for the correctness of the information, and in this case, this piece of shit got me screwed, pardon my french.
So, learn from my mistake, stick with something else. Tax Cut ($20 for the same basic functionality, and they couldn't be worse if they tried!), pen and paper... anything.
Your disgruntled and more than usually rabid programmer.
I haven't had a reason to blog for a while. Up until today. I just efiled my return with Turbotax, and, after having spent 2 days with their online suite, I can happily suggest to my readers that they look elsewhere for their tax return preparation and filing needs. TaxCut appears, at the very least, to be cheaper.
Specific issues?
Well, first off, I used the premier version because I had some stock and stock option trades to report. Data import from my brokers succeeded but imported completely useless data (sales were bunched together incorrectly and cost basis information was missing across the board).
Manual data entry for the trades proved challenging - the forms available are badly documented and are missing some crucial fields. I ended up doing a whole lot of precalculation with a spreadsheet and then entering the numbers I had come up with in the forms. It doesn't help that you can't simply enter all info on one page but have to click through 10 to 12 pages of wizards if you just want to change one field.
The reason for all those offline caculations? TurboTax cannot handle wash sales correctly. Ow.
I paid 50$ for the premium version in the hopes not to have to do all this manually.
There are many other hassles - TT decided that I owed a penalty this year, and although I finally found out how to convince it that I didn't (Tools|Search for Forms|2210|go through a lenghty wizard), it was, how to say this? Nonobvious. It also decided to print 4 estimated tax vouchers for 2008, which, it turns out, I really don't need, but the insistance of the program prompted a lot of research.
My typical conclusion at this point would be that I wasted $50 for the privilege of being allowed to do all the work myself and then have it pretty printed, except, well, Turbo Taxes printouts aren't pretty.
But, alas, there is worse. Turbo tax elected to add a new form for employee stock trades and submit it for exactly one of the trades I entered. All others are just listed normally on Schedule D. None of this was apparent before I had completed e-filing. I am now waiting with interest, to see if this gets me audited.
This is the reason I'd never use it again - if I can't see what will be submitted to the IRS, I cannot vouch for the correctness of the information, and in this case, this piece of shit got me screwed, pardon my french.
So, learn from my mistake, stick with something else. Tax Cut ($20 for the same basic functionality, and they couldn't be worse if they tried!), pen and paper... anything.
Your disgruntled and more than usually rabid programmer.
